Slashdot Mirror
Apple Sues Think Secret
Isaac Newton writes "Reuters is reporting that Apple Computer has sued website Think Secret for allegedly divulging trade secrets relating to its upcoming sub-$500 Mac desktop and office suite. The lawsuit is apparently giving legitimacy to the rumors."
This would certainly help more people hear more about Apple's new sub $500 Mac ;)
Well, it worked for the MPAA and RIAA.... ;)
Apple really needs to start spreading their own rumors. That way the correct to false rumors ratio could be kept in their favor and the effect leaked truths have on product launches would be lessened as fewer people would believe them.
Apple couldn't find the internal leak, so they're shooting the messenger.. Not the nicest tactic ever.
http://twitter.com/onion2k
It's not as if anyone else is allowed to produce a cheap Mac to compete with Apple (thus beating them to it), as Apple hold all the cards for that.
Cheap PC's already exist... so where is the competition that they are afriad of? Who can take advantage of this "trade secret"?
As far as I can see (not far having not RTFA) this is just good journalistic work, and good promotion for Apple.
I really like Apple. Though I had my share of problems with Apple products I generally think they make fine products and I definately prefer OSX to Windows.
/. will soon tell us why Apple is right in doing something that would certainly be considered evil by the /. crowd if any other company did it. Talk about a loyal followin.
But things like this really piss me of (excuse my language).
Doesn't Apple recognize, that sites like Think Secret actually help Apple? Just think about how many stories there are on the web about rumours that immanate from these kind of sides and how much exposure these stories give to Apple.
Ah well, but judging from experience, the Apple advocates on
Sometimes I find it amusing that while Apple has been constantly frightening the likes of Think Secret (enthusiast sites?), even with lawsuits, its supporters keep on supporting Apple, more than ever.
Try that with another company.
Also, whenever Steve Jobs is on the stands and giving a presentation (sometimes with questionable accuracies...), the audience seem to clap their hands every so often.
Maybe these are explained in the book "The Cult of Mac"?
I'm a fanboy as well. But Apple are right in doing this to one of the best rumour sites on the net. What if this information is false but because of it, their share price goes up and there is a geniune interest from investors. Only for the rumour to be false and thus they get hit by it.
Thats not to say however that they will succeed, I think they are after the people who leak information to TS. Im not up to date on american law, but wouldn't TS be protected by some sort of freedom of speech law.
In any case, I don't think Nick Depulme is bothered, he's still posting rumours on his site, even after the lawsuit! TS have just confirmed the ipod micro rumour.
Jonathanjk.com
Apple couldn't find the internal leak
Companies often provide information about product launches ahead of time with non-disclosure agreements. Perhaps it was a member of the press or some other non-Mac employee.......
And then paragraph 3 of TFA... claiming that Think Secret had induced these individuals to breach confidentiality agreements that they had signed with Apple. Perhaps that's what it was...
about our legal system being used for advertisement?
Yeah right.
You need to take a reality pill as boycotts are all but dead in this day and age of consumerism.
MacSlash covered this before, check the comments there where the s/n ratio is lower.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Instead of Apple, if Microsoft had done the same thing, all slashdotters would have tied MS to a stake burned it by now. In fact, if any other company had done the same thing, it would have attracted a lot more negative responses from slashdot and everyone else than Apple. This is not the first time Apple is doing something like this. I remember some guy creating that OS X panel thing (whatever it's called) for windows (without taking anything from OS X) and Apple making him take it off the web because it infringed on their IP. I think it was called Yz dock. I guess Apple bigots are the worst.
It's not quite a sub $500 mac. It's headless for a start, so users are going to need to spend $100 for a half decent CRT, probably more. I don't know what the target market is, as Apple has always sold headless macs to the professional arena (PowerMacs are headless as a rule) but lower priced macs have been aimed at the home user. I hope for Apple's sake that they work out they need to bundle in a cheap Apple branded 17" CRT for $100 or so (Dell style).
Comment removed based on user account deletion
An Anonymous Coward posted the following in regards to the rumored Apple office suite on January 3rd, 2004:
As with all rumors, there's no need to believe it until Apple starts taking legal action against the rumor sites. Until then, you can assume that they probably missed the mark.
The posted was modded +5, Funny (60% funny, 20% insightful, 20% underrated).
Shouldn't the trade partner (or even the Apple employee) that let the information leave the company be held ultimately culpable ?
Maybe this is why IANAL
Doesn't Apple need to prove that the leak somehow hurt them?
I thought the rumors were helping... I had decided to hold on to my money in case these were real instead of building a video edit station for my home movies. I love my old B&W G3, but its just too slow to use on a daily basis for video editing. I would rather use iMovie on a $500 G4 at 1.25 GHz and I'm hoping it happens. Otherwise I've got stuff to order from newegg.
LiveJournal Buyout Confirmed Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday January 06, @02:10AM Your Rights Online: Apple Sues Think Secret Posted by CowboyNeal on Thursday January 06, @06:35AM
Except that Apple has a somewhat legitimate gripe about people breaching their NDAs, but any sane judge will tell that iTunes user to go buy a different portable player, use another online music store, and shut the fuck up. The guy has NO CASE. Apple never made a secret of the fact that music downloaded from the iTMS won't work on any other portable player except the iPod. For that matter, neither do the other online music stores.
That guy is either a complete moron, or he's just looking for a quick buck and thinks Apple will pay him off to make him go away-- which I highly doubt they will.
~Philly
"Apple has a point"
No they don't.
This happens in any other field. Cars, designer clothes, politics, entertainment, everthing.
And sometimes that information is inaccurate. And sometimes it puts that company is a really poor light.
And nobody sues. Oh. Except apple.
The real joke is that Apple only sues little guys... the guys who are hard pressed to defend themselves.
If these guys had a decent budget, they could sue the hell out of Apple. I'm hoping someone does, because Apple only bullies little tiny websites. They stay clear of anybodhy their own size.
And then people like you defend them. I just bought 3 new Macs, but honestly, people like you are the least enjoyable part of the Macintosh experience, because you'd defend Apple no matter what. You sicken me.
Interestingly/amusingly/somethingly, ThinkSecret has posted more "rumours" since the lawsuit was announced:
$149 1GB iPod is coming
> I mean, if they really wanted to deal with this more effectively
> they'd wait until AFTER the 11th.
I think this is more than squelching a rumor so as to not blow Steve Jobs' "oh, one more thing" that he uses to introduce whatever is the centerpiece of the show. Investors and competitors pay attention to Apple's offerings, too.
If investors (or potential investors) hear a rumor of a possible Apple product, the price of AAPL can be affected (either positively or negatively). What if the rumor is more interesting than the actual product? Remember when the iPod was about to be announced? People on Slashdot were speculating that Apple was going to deliver nothing short of a perpetual motion machine. When it was a more mundane MP3 player (albeit, the most successful one introduced to date), people were let down. I can imagine even a sell-off of AAPL happening after this. So Apple's job is to protect the price of AAPL, too.
Also, competitive intelligence is pretty hard, but Apple's competitors must love all these Apple rumor sites, because they do their job for them. Even just getting wind of a product that Apple's planning to build can give them an advantage. They can either shift product plans, or at least not get caught with their jaw on the floor when they see a new Apple innovation (think about people's first reaction to Aqua).
I like hearing Apple rumors, too, but I realize that Apple has every right to protect their intellectual property.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
It's easy to guess how the lawsuit happened. Some Apple marketing person wanted to create a buzz about a new product, so he or she gave the information to someone sure to publish it.
Then, some Apple managers said to themselves, "This is our chance to act like Arnold Schwarzenegger! We will pretend that it's the end of the world, and only we can save it. May we'll even get on Slashdot, for free! We secretly believe that open source hardware is better anyway, so let's sink the company. We can always get jobs somewhere else, because we can say we worked for Apple!"
And, Apple lawyers agreed with this, for their own reasons. They said, "We're tired of writing those license agreements no one reads. We want to go outdoors! We want to kill, kill, kill, and be just like Arnold Schwarzenegger in those movies!"
The biggest friends of big business are the managers. The biggest enemies of big business are... the managers.
The alternative theory is whoever got the information got it from many difficult hours of sneaking around Apple headquarters. Yeah, right.
Think Secret has every right to publish that story, and every right to retain the identity of its source. Apple has every right to to sue them.
Being prepared to defend your right to keep your sources secret and to defend your right to publish is a cost of doing business of any new publication. Think Secret and other online publications don't get a free pass, but neither should they be exempted from the same standards that apply to and protect traditional publications.
-- Slashdot: When Public Access TV Says "No"
The iTunes suit is a farce, IMO. Apple permits burning to CD, and you can even use that CD in iTunes to "import" the tracks as MP3. There you have it, two ways to play a track on nearly any portable audio player.
I still question the idea of purchasing music as a pre-comressed data file, DRM'ed files at that. I'd much rather patronize my local used CD store, that way I don't get rights that might disappear if the computer or iPod crashes and I can't revoke its authorization. The files I can back up, sure, but if I hit my authorization limit then I'm screwed.
> Or, thinksecret can do what real journalists do and refuse to reveal their source
Christ man, you're talking about a computer rumor site relaying information from people with NDAs. This isn't exactly Valerie Plame. If a "journalist" gets involved in a lawsuit regarding sources, the question becomes one of ethics based on the public trust/greater good not some absolute, "I wont tell you who murdered that couple because I'm a journalist!!!" If you can't see the difference betweeen Watergate and Think Secret its time to step away from the computer for a long, long time.
Like the grandparent posted lawsuits like these are started to help the discovery process to find those who did break the NDAs. The manufactured outrage of "Big company goes after little guy" is paper thin and on par with the false outrage of the RIAA actually suing people for giving away their songs.
I'd much rather see a system which goes after unethical people because the alternative is to go after the technology itself. What I dont need is bittorrent made illegal or having special licenses to run a web server because a few rotten apples are ruining it for everyone else.
Not to mention Think Secret is a commercial site (it serves at least three ads on its pages) and its business model is to coax people to break NDAs and post them on the web soley for profit, not for greater good or whistleblowing, but for money and ego inflation. Not exactly Woodward and Berstein here.
Some people here reckon that "if it were Microsoft" suing rumour sites, then we here at /. would be ripping them a new bunghole. These people say that, because it's Apple doing the suing, we're letting them off with nary a flame.
/revoke/ previously announced features from previously announced products whose previously announced shipping dates have just been slipped by two years!! While Apple fansites try to guess what Apple will release next, MS fansites are left to try to guess what announced features might be left out!!
But... MS rumour web sites must be pretty boring. Not only do most rumours come from Microsoft themselves... most of them
I have thought for a long time that Think Secret had the sole intention of harming Apple.
... Think Secret's spin is - small Apple Reseller's weren't getting enough and the two hard drive suppliers probably wouldn't be able to keep up.
Their rumor accuaracy is amazing and it seems they like to steal any thunder they can from Apple.
They take any good news and put a negative spin on it such as; iPod sales. It is predicted that Apple will sell 4 million+ iPods this quarter
I have also believed that Think Secret's knowledge of the reseller lawsuit brought on MacAdam & Elite Computers is a little too intimate. It's almost like THIS is who's running the show there.
I think Apple should go after them for more than just "trade secret revealing and developer coercing" but also libel and malicious intent.
By The Time It Got To The Other End Of The Room: Notes About Apple Rumor Sites
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny
Fuck off AC --
:-)
I'd feel the same if it were Microsoft and I wish them all the ill feelings in the world.
That doesn't mean that folks should be allowed to kill business this way. Hell, maybe Microsoft would make better products if they were allowed some room to get to market without everyone breathing down their necks and could market towards having the best product -- not worrying about what competitor is going to come out with the same product and then claim that Big Bad M$ Stole My Idea (that I dead on a rumor mill).
But I repeat myself -- Fuck off AC
Apple doesn't have a leg to stand on. Thinksecret is a news and rumours site. They are in the business of printing information that is newsworthy to their readers.
Unless ThinkSecret broke into Apple (physically or electronically) and stole the info they published, they've done nothing wrong. If Apple sues them in a state with a good reporter's shield law they might not even have to disclose who gave them the information.
Who did what now?
S'truth, that. The more /. hates an Apple product, the better it sells. See "What fool buys a computer without a floppy?" and "Who would pay $250 for a 4GB iPod? Nobody!"
I'm kind of worried about this theoretical iMac -- enough posters have been positive about it that it may fail.
Ceci n'est pas une sig.
"Apple, in the complaint filed on Tuesday, sued Web site Think Secret and other unnamed individuals, claiming that Think Secret had induced these individuals to breach confidentiality agreements that they had signed with Apple."
Ummm, so what? We're not dealing with government secrets, only private enterprise. The press "induces" people to spill secrets all the time. And thinksecret is the press here. If Apple has the right to sue anyone, it's the people who broke their confidentiality agreements. Not the press. I hope ThinkSecret gets a good legal team and shoves this right up Apple's ass. One wonders if free speech organizations will get involved with this, such as the ACLU (or do they only deal with the goverment? I don't know...). What we have here is a corporation trying to intimidate a news outlet. Pure and simple. Of course, Apple can do no wrong...
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a nice piece on the lawsuit.
I've said in my journal I doubt there's a $500 headless iMac coming but right now it's the $500 I find the unlikely part of the rumour, not the machine itself which continues to make perfect sense as long as the price is reasonable. Around $700 seems credible to me.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
That's why they're suing saying that Think Secret enticed people to break NDA, which IS illegal (or I assume it's illegal anyway).
Thinkin' Lincoln - a web comic of presidential proportions
The entire purpose of maintaining trade secrets is to be able to give the competition as little time as possible to react... The hope here would be that Apple burst out with the product, and Microsoft and the PC manufacturers would be scrambling to react... by which time it'd already be too late and Apple would, as they have done with iMac and iPod in the past, rake in a chunk before the non-innovators in the industry knew what hit them.
The Apple customer base is characteristically known for its sense of community... we like Apple, their products, their ideology (well, the pre-Sculley, post-Amelio ideology of Steve Jobs)... we want to see them do well so we can continue to enjoy their products.
What kind of idiot ruins the surprise? The same kind of idiot that makes an entire business model out of telling you what you're bound to find out a few days later... Yes, I'm referring to that self-absorbed idiot who can't seem to stop stammering about his great comic book collection, Harry Knowles of Ain't It Cool News.
At any rate, Apple has a legitimate concern... and their concern affects not only their bottom line, but ours as well.
That is, unless there are any individuals here who really believe that Microsoft Windows is the most innovative, most productive operating system on the market, or that Microsoft Office is the most efficient, most cost-effective and most intuitively-designed productivity suite ever made...
Hello oranges... Meet kumquats. (Didn't want to add to the confusion by saying "apples and oranges" in the middle of an Apple story.)
You make several points, all of them wrong:
1) Think Secret isn't "Dealing" in anything, they are journalists reporting the news. First amendment protected their right to publish--regardless of Apple's desire to keep the info private. I'm sure Nixon would've preferred Woodward and Bernstein keep their mouths shut and stop looking into things over at the Watergate, but again, the First Amendment protects their right to publish.
2) Accessory after the fact implies that the reporter at TS had some knowledge that a crime has been comitted. Yet if the info was leaked by somebody who had authorized access to the information, or if the info was left somewhere that anybody could gain access to it, there wasn't any crime. Perhaps a breach of contract on the part of the employee, but not a crime, therefore no "accessory" charge possible.
3) A reporter publishing information and somebody reselling stolen property are total polar opposites--one has nothing to do with the other. Please call a cab for your strawman--he appears to have had too much to drink.
4) Only a government can criminalize disseminating information. A private party doesn't have this option. If they give the information to somebody who hands it to the press, their only redress is with the leaker and not the reporter/newspaper.
Now, if they were suing the person who LEAKED the info for breach of a confidentiality agreement, they would have a case. But the reporter/newspaper who brings the information public is not comitting a crime, he is exercising his rights under the first amendment (and doing his job, to boot.)
Who did what now?